Transforming Heart Health: Inside the Mission of LiveMetric

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Jun 5

Written By Nicole Kinsey

In a world where cardiovascular disease remains the number one killer, StartUp Health community member LiveMetric is challenging the status quo with a breakthrough wearable that brings hospital-grade continuous hemodynamic monitoring to your wrist. Led by CEO Tomer Bentzion and President Kelly Benning, LiveMetric is on a mission to deliver real-time, continuous insights that could save lives — and change how we think about chronic care.

By Nicole Kinsey

The Challenge: Fighting a Silent Killer

Hypertension is often called the “silent killer” — a condition that afflicts one in two Americans, yet goes unchecked in 75% of those diagnosed. Why? Because traditional monitoring methods are sporadic, uncomfortable, and easy to ignore.

“We’ve all seen it — patients take medication, check their blood pressure for a few weeks, and then the cuff gets buried in a drawer,” says LiveMetric’s president, Kelly Benning. Without regular monitoring, critical warning signs go unnoticed, leading to preventable strokes, heart attacks, and hospitalizations.

LiveMetric addresses this crisis by offering a continuous stream of accurate, clinically validated blood pressure data — day and night, without the need for bulky cuffs or clinic visits.

Origin Story: Loss Sparks a Mission

The genesis of LiveMetric's mission is personal. Tomer Bentzion's close friend, Shay, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure at just 42 and tragically passed away a mere 13 months later. This devastating loss ignited a conviction in Tomer: continuous, accurate hemodynamic data could be the key to saving lives like Shay's. This conviction was further solidified through Tomer's connection with Prof Nir Uriel, a renowned expert in heart failure, who now chairs LiveMetric's Clinical Advisory Board.

From its earliest days, the team has blended medical expertise with technological ingenuity. Benning, with over two decades of experience in healthcare, from pharmaceuticals to digital health, has witnessed the evolving landscape of patient engagement. She recognized the growing desire of individuals to be more involved in their health journey and the limitations of intermittent data in managing chronic conditions.

Between them, the mission was clear: the need to provide accessible, continuous, and accurate cardiovascular data to both patients and providers, empowering them to make timely and informed decisions.

One pivotal moment in the company’s development came during a clinical trial at the University of Chicago, where LiveMetric’s AI flagged signs of valvular disease in dozens of patients — many previously undiagnosed — all of whom were confirmed by additional diagnostics. “Hemodynamics is how your blood flows through the vessels, and it is defined by a handful of metrics, such as blood pressure, cardiac output, and stroke volume,” explains Tomer, “our tech extracts these form the pressure waveform, and it so appears that this very pressure waveform carries a signature for many known cardiac conditions.”

That was the moment the team knew they were building something powerful.

Under the Hood: A Breakthrough in Continuous Monitoring

At the heart of LiveMetric’s innovation is the LiveOne band — a sleek, wearable device that passively records blood pressure from the radial artery using a nano-pressure sensor array. Unlike traditional cuffs that estimate blood pressure based on blood flow, LiveMetric's measurements are correlated to the gold standard: the arterial line used in critical care settings. This ensures a level of accuracy that instills confidence in both patients and physicians, reducing the need for in-office verification.

Explaining the technology simply, Kelly Benning describes the LiveOne band as a "device that looks like a bracelet that can eavesdrop to your heart by listening nonstop to your artery." This continuous monitoring provides a comprehensive view of a patient's blood pressure patterns, capturing fluctuations throughout the day and night, something a single point-in-time cuff reading simply cannot achieve.

The user experience is designed for seamless integration into daily life. Patients wear the comfortable band passively, and the device continuously collects data. This information is then analyzed and accessible to both the patient through a user-friendly app and to their healthcare providers through their existing electronic medical record (EMR) systems or other preferred platforms.

Patients gain valuable insights into their blood pressure trends: identifying patterns related to medication adherence, dietary changes (like increased salt intake), exercise habits, and even sleep patterns. They can track morning surges, nighttime dips (a marker of a healthy heart), and overall blood pressure variability. The ability to set goals and monitor progress empowers individuals to take a more active role in managing their health.

For physicians, LiveMetric provides a continuous stream of accurate data, enabling them to make more informed treatment decisions, monitor the effectiveness of interventions in real-time, and potentially identify early warning signs of deterioration, preventing hospitalizations and readmissions.

The device has already earned FDA clearance and is being used in remote patient monitoring (RPM) programs, clinical studies, and hospitals across the U.S. and Europe.

And it’s not just for acute care. LiveMetric’s future roadmap includes the ability to detect early indicators of complex cardiac conditions like biphasic systole and valvular regurgitation, opening the door to broad cardiovascular diagnostics — all from a wristband.

What’s Next: Scaling Access, Impacting Lives

LiveMetric is currently in its commercialization phase, actively engaging with healthcare enterprises and RPM companies. Looking ahead, the company is preparing to launch a consumer-friendly version of their band with enhanced comfort, waterproofing, and magnetic closures — making it even more accessible for older adults and high-risk populations. Ideally, this next-gen consumer-ready band will be offered in major retail outlets, democratizing access to continuous blood pressure monitoring.

At the same time, the company is in the midst of a capital raise and advancing clinical trials for FDA clearance to monitor cardiac output and stroke volume.

Looking ahead, Benning envisions a world where high-risk patients — like a 73-year-old woman with heart failure or a busy diabetic professional — don’t have to guess if their treatment is working. Their doctors will already know, thanks to a continuous stream of data delivered in real time.

Success for LiveMetric means fewer strokes, fewer emergency room visits, and fewer missed warning signs. “This is about more than just numbers,” Benning says. “It’s about empowering people with insight at the right moment, in the right hands, to prevent the preventable.”

The passion and dedication of Tomer Bentzion, Kelly Benning, and the entire LiveMetric team, fueled by personal experience and a profound understanding of the unmet needs in cardiovascular care, position them to make a truly transformative impact on the world. By "eavesdropping" on our hearts in a way never before possible, LiveMetric is paving the way for a future where cardiovascular health is managed proactively, conveniently, and ultimately, more effectively.

Join us in welcoming LiveMetric to StartUp Health’s Cardiometabolic Health Moonshot Community, where they will be collaborating with partners and institutions to radically improve outcomes for people with hypertension and beyond.

Connect with LiveMetric via email

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